Dwarf bunt disease, caused by T. contraversa Kühn, is endemic in dryland winter wheat in production environments with at least 60 days of continuous snow cover over unfrozen soil. Such conditions favor teliospore germination, which is induced by high soil-moisture and temperatures between -2 oC to -10 oC (Peterson et al., 2009). However, in recent years dwarf bunt and the related disease common bunt, caused by T. caries (D.C.) Tul. (=T. tritici) and T. foetida (Wallr.) Liro (=T. laevis, have been reported in areas where their occurrence was previously rare. Also, susceptible reactions in known resistant cultivars have also been observed. These changes suggest that bunt diseases may be increasing in importance and that new pathogen races have evolved. Seed treatment with fungicides such as difenoconazole can control bunts of wheat without reducing yield or causing phytotoxicity (Keener et al., 1995; Goates 1996). However, host resistance is a more sustainable approach in wheat production, particularly for organic farming systems in which no chemical seed treatment is allowed (Matanguihan et al., 2011). The University of Idaho, Utah State University, and USDA-ARS Small Grains and Potato Germplasm Research Unit have worked collaboratively on bunt research over the past several decades. This effort has generated more than 30 resistant cultivars that have been grown in the wheat production areas of the Intermountain West and used for cultivar improvement and basic research worldwide. To better understand the genetic control of bunt resistance, the three institutions have used a diversity of approaches, including conventional breeding and field selection, QTL mapping (Chen et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2018), and genome wide association mapping (Gordon et al., 2020). This work was enabled by grants from Idaho Wheat Commission, University Hatch Act funding, and support from the USDA-ARS. Ongoing bunt resistance research projects on genomic selection and candidate gene identification have recently been enhanced via competitive grant support from USDA-NIFA AFRI program. QTL and associated markers have been identified and used for cultivar improvement. Candidate genes underlying the QTL are being validated by CRISPR-CAS technology and cloning candidate genes is the next-step objective.